[NTLK] NewTNG 3.0

There are 7" Droid tablets too - that's about the same diagonal size
as a Newt, though thinner. Einstein running on one of those would
probably feel a lot like a color Newton.
Porting NewtonScript can't be that difficult. It's a tokenized
JavaScript-SmallTalk-a few other things interpreted language, fully
documented, so reverse-engineering a runtime compiler shouldn't be an
overly egregious task, given adequate skills in a language such as
C++. (I don't have those skills, unfortunately, but I know enough to
be dangerous.) So developing a modern platform that can handle all
those old Newt packages is feasible.
The core of Newton, though, was and still is its HWR. That's the true
value of the platform, and the part really worth keeping more than
anything else. I don't know how you'd be able to get into it, extract
it, and use it - certainly not legally, as far as patents are
concerned, and possibly not usefully at all. I'm operating under the
assumption that it's present in any Newt ROM, but knowing that and
being able to actually figure out which part is which is another thing
entirely.
It's too bloody bad Apple seemed to permanently spike this one. You
just know the source code is sitting there somewhere in a server stack
in Cupertino. Wouldn't it be just delightful of them to release it to
the open source world? They sort of owe it to the open-sourcers anyway
- after all, that's where Darwin came from.
Alas.
--
-- Warren Ockrassa | nightwares.com